


Spiderfamily

by Not_You



Series: Eight-Armed Hugs [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Animal Instincts, Animalistic, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Identity, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spiderlings are glad to welcome Bucky into the family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spiderfamily

Natasha is prepared for a lot of things the Winter Soldier might try, but pretty much no one is prepared for him to show up at the tower apparently unarmed and asking for Steve. He's completely peaceable and even after they search him he's still unarmed. He's also clean, and has chopped off that raggedy mane of his. He looks a lot more like archive photography of James Buchanan Barnes, now. He's nervous about the scanning and medical tests they put him through, but every time Natasha starts to think that it's too much, he looks up to the observation window, meets Steve's eyes, and endures.

Steve isn't doing half as well, and Natasha has been holding his hand for the last hour. Sam is on the other side, and Clint is off managing the brood, who know full well what's going on and are probably an ungovernable mass of impatience. At least he has Pepper to help him. The girls like Pepper, and regard her as a font of womanly wisdom second only to their mother.

Down in the medbay below them the Soldier flinches as a tech touches the attachment point of his metal arm, and Steve makes this hurt little mammal noise and squeezes her hand. Sam speaks softly to him, and Steve and the Soldier relax in the same slow, cautious way.

After an eternity of waiting, they're allowed come down into the medbay and linger awkwardly as Steve clings to him and calls him 'Bucky.' Natasha knows the name from file footage and Steve's war stories, and for the first time the Soldier looks like someone's friend, like a real person with a nickname and a history of his own. After a while longer they withdraw, since the surveillance systems will look after Steve.

Sam turns down an invitation to dinner because he was tired when all of this started, but sends his love to the girls and promises to visit them soon. Natasha makes her way up to her floor and finds her brood swarming over their father in his armchair and putting makeup on him as Pepper gathers her things.

“I'm abandoning you, Clint,” she says, “I have to go deal with my own maniac.”

Natasha laughs. “Reinforcements are here, don't worry.” 

Pepper laughs, and wishes everyone a fond farewell as she hugs Natasha and heads out.

“Thank god you're here,” Clint mumbles, constrained from further conversation by Rada lining his lips.

“To see how pretty they make you,” Natasha coos, and half of the girls abandon their posts to join her in the kitchen, trilling, 'meeeeeeeeeet!' the way they still do sometimes. She smiles at them and pulls the marinating steaks out of the fridge to start grilling, telling her brood to set the table.

They're all curious about Bucky, of course, but Natasha keeps them away for a while. Not only is her own arachnid caution in play, but even if Bucky is completely safe for children, he needs some time to readjust to being a real person. Of course, this leaves her and Clint to deal with curious, thwarted spiderlings who are, according to Clint's reckoning of human development, 'just getting to the snotty stage.' They fight with each other and obsess over Spiderman more than ever and complain constantly, and even being called down to the medbay because they have something to tell her is a bit of a relief.

Bucky is sitting on an exam table, looking dull-eyed and subdued. His metal arm is gone, and Natasha hates to see Steve seeing him so helpless. He stands close to Bucky but doesn't quite touch him. Dr. Cho gives Natasha a tight, professional smile.

“Hello, Agent Romanov. The results of our latest test are relevant to you.”

“Then tell me,” she says, starting to get twitchy and wishing it wasn't so bright in here.

Dr. Cho is already sequencing Natasha's genome to make sure she won't suffer premature aging or other ill effects of being a lab-grown hybrid of two different phyla, and has run some comparisons between Natasha and Bucky only to find incredible similarities. 

“As far as I can tell,” she concludes, “your human DNA was taken from Mr. Barnes. In fact, the HYDRA modifications to him might have been what made the combination possible in the first place, and it definitely helped you to conceive.”

Bucky's eyes clear a bit, and he stares at Natasha for a long moment. She tenses, ready to deal with an attack or a complete mental breakdown. Instead his mouth twitches like he wants to smile but is afraid to, and he says, “...I have grandbabies?”

Steve laughs, scrubbing at his eyes before hugging his friend tightly. “Yeah, Buck, you do.”

“They've been desperate enough to meet you without this,” Natasha says, her mouth curling in amusement.

“How many?” Bucky asks, something like hunger in his eyes.

“Eight,” Natasha says, and she can see the number delighting and overwhelming him at the same time. He makes her promise to bring the girls to see him soon, and then lets Steve lead him away. 

Dr. Cho sighs. “Poor boy.”

“Where's his arm?”

“We're making sure it's not bugged or trapped. So far it seems all right, but better safe than sorry.”

Natasha nods. “About how much longer should that be?”

Dr. Cho smiles. “You should be able to tell the girls something definite within the next two days.”

It actually takes three days. Three days that Natasha spends mentally listing the pros and cons of eating her young. The girls are whiny and fussy and argumentative and claim they can smell Bucky even though there's no way his scent has actually reached them here. At least the third day is a Monday, and Natasha can make them Charles Xavier's problem. Well, Hank McCoy's problem, he's running the NYC Xavier Institute campus, but Charles visits frequently enough that he may well encounter them as they are today, constantly pinching and poking each other and complaining about everything. 

Clint draws the short straw and has to ride with them, and he comes staggering into the gym where Natasha is working on a heavy bag and groans, “Maybe you should've eaten me.”

She doesn't pause or even look up. “You're not taking the easy way out, Barton.”

He laughs, and does stretches until she's ready to spar with him. The exercise is soothing, and after they've given each other a few new bruises they stop to eat and to shower, just toweling off when Dr. Cho gives Natasha a call. Apparently Bucky's arm needs further testing, but the man himself seems stable, if a bit depressed.

Natasha shrugs. “He's lonely. I'll bring the girls by after school.”

“And I'll come with you,” Clint says after she hangs up.

“Of course,” she says, kissing his cheek. “The way you protect our brood is one of your many excellent qualities.”

They take their time gearing up, and go to collect the girls together. They like doing this when they can, arriving a little early to look at posters and art projects on the walls. There's a poster about the color vision of jumping spiders made by Alisa and Ariadna, and on the next bulletin board there's a haiku by Oksana:

_An itsy-bitsy_  
spider ran wherever it  
thought that it should go.  


Clint chuckles, gazing at it with such fondness that Natasha has to bite his shoulder at this inappropriate time and place, jaw pressing hard. Clint jumps a little and shivers. “Love me so much you could just eat me up?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, and hugs him, letting go when the bell rings and their girls come charging toward them. They're excited to be free and have had a good day, and Clint puts in earplugs before Natasha tells them that today they can visit their grandfather. The chorus of squeals she gets in response is more than enough to make her wish that she had done the same, and she tells them again and again to remember that Bucky is fragile and they must be careful with him.

When they actually head for Steve's floor, the girls get shy enough to quiet down, and peer around Steve when he answers the door. It's dim inside, soothing and quiet, and Bucky is sitting in an armchair watching something on a tablet. He looks up, his expression somehow hunted and happy at the same time, and the girls beam at him, coming closer at Steve steps aside.

Anastasia is the first to speak. She comes close and peers into Bucky's face before grinning. “You look like me,” she says, and Bucky grins back.

**Author's Note:**

> See how that haiku has only the first line italicized? I CANNOT FIX IT. A /i tag appears after 'bitsy' no matter how many times I try to move it to the end of the selection. Anyone with a solution besides a hammer to get the machines before they get me, please speak up.


End file.
